“Familiar Limbo” is a series of oil paintings that I created in order to explore the confusion that comes with complicated relationships. When focusing more on familial relationships, the feeling of this confusion often resembles limbo. A constant back and forth with seemingly no resolution. Figures are kept visually vague because when I am constantly unsure about my feelings towards someone, they begin to feel like a mysterious figure. They become someone I never knew and never will know. Keeping these figures ambiguous was also important because I want the viewer to use them as vessels that they can fill with their own familial memories. More inspiration for this series comes from the idea of the nuclear family as well as symbols of my own familial nostalgia. Examples of this include visual nostalgia such as family photos and their unique frames. Textures and smells, such as cigarette smoke and wood, also made their way into my work. Small sensory memories like these have become significantly more important in my work over the past couple of years. Drawing from these common nostalgic points of interest is what helped me create this vision of this alternate world. These works function as a display of this strange realm of limbo where my familial confusion is manifested in physical forms.